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Max Planck (1897)

Treatise on Thermodynamics by Dr. Max Planck, published by Longmans, Green and Company Ltd and printed in Great Britain. This copy, which was once the property of a student at Trinity College Cambridge, is the 3rd English edition from 1927 (translated from the 7th German edition).

Click on the image to view the entire book on the Internet Archive.

Planck’s Treatise was the staple textbook on thermodynamics for the first two decades of the 20th century.

Max Planck (1858-1947)

The content is structured with great clarity, encompassing fundamentals (temperature, heat, molecular weight, heat capacity), first law, second law, and applications to special states of equilibrium, e.g. multi-constituent systems, gases, dilute solutions. It contains 287 numbered equations.

The Planck function (Eq.75) is introduced on page 118 of the 292-page book, which is organised ínto 4 parts and 15 chapters. Click on image for larger view.

The translator, Alexander Ogg, was a Scot. Born in 1870 and educated at Aberdeen University, he obtained his doctorate as an Exhibitioner under Walter Nernst at Gottingen University in 1898. His thesis was on the chemical equilibrium between amalgams and solutions; where his German translation skills came from is not clear. He emigrated to South Africa in 1905.